There Must Be Some More Underlying Issues Here
Ollyy/Shutterstock
“When I worked in an ICU, I worked with a married couple. They seemed normal for the most part. The husband especially, but the wife was a little… uh… high energy. She was not that weird, or so we thought.
The woman wrote herself multiple death threats (one was written in blood, don’t know if it was hers) and would put them in her locker. Then she’d put on this full show complete with tears and a full freak out every time she’d ‘receive’ one of these letters.
She spread rumors and tried to peg these threats on another co-worker that she didn’t get along with who was a highly unlikely culprit.
It was a huge deal. The police had to be involved and we had to keep security on our floor at all times. They interrogated every employee that worked each time one of these letters showed up. They installed a camera in the locker room and that’s when they found out the psycho wife was putting the letters in her own locker.
Obviously, she was fired. Her poor husband still had to work with us while this thing was going on. He finally just quit. I felt bad for him with everyone gossiping about his crazy wife. I know he was embarrassed.
It was so out of left field. I had worked with her for almost eight months, and she seems pretty normal. I actually liked working with both of them. I was taken aback when she was receiving these threats. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to do this woman harm.
I was floored when it came to light she was behind it all. If there is legitimately something wrong with her I hope she gets the help she needs. She was an outstanding nurse. Even if she was crazy.”
An Honest Mistake Or Something More?
Elnur/Shutterstock
“I found a major issue with a larger health insurance company the day I started as a ‘financial analyst’ back in December of 1986.
It was my first job at a big company. They gave me a paper report of their ‘group accounts receivables report’ that was literally two-feet thick and asked me to look at it – like I was going to see anything.
I went through the report, and later that day, they asked me if I had any questions. I said: ‘Why are the same groups appearing three times in different sections of the report?’ My boss said: ‘They’re not.’ I said: ‘Sure, they are, let me show you.’
It turns out there was an error in the receivable estimating logic of the report and it caused the company to overestimate their accounts receivable by $75 million through the first 11 months of the year.
There was a quick investigation and the corporate controller was fired before the end of the week.”
Someone Didn’t Get The Memo
Jinga/Shutterstock
“I once worked on a casual contract for a few summers in a food factory. It was one of those ones that make microwave meals. We worked in the cooking area and would have a laugh during the shift, but were all mature enough to know when to get on with the work.
Anyway, there was one kid who started fresh out of school and really wanted to get taken on permanently.
A couple of months in, we both got offered full-time positions. I turned it down as I was going back to college a few weeks later, so there was no point, but this kid took it.
Having done all the paperwork, he started his first week and what would be his last on the job. Most of the meals were made for big brand companies and a very major customer was coming in for a visit that week. This meant we basically all had the day off from work so we wouldn’t mess up, but instead, a sample line was being run just so they could see the process and we wouldn’t lose the contract.
The kid didn’t grasp the importance of this and came out of the cold store with some mash potatoes to throw at someone. This would have been ok on any other day as long as senior management weren’t around, but not this day. Instead, he hit one of the visitors.
The kid was gone within the hour and left in a flood of tears.”
When Laziness Leads To Being On The Terrorist Watch List
Themalni/Shutterstock
“I used to work at the post office. In December, there’s always a flood of mail (both packages and letters), so we hire like 10 extra temporary drivers and around 30 extra for the mailroom (small-ish town).
This one temp-mailman would load his car with the mail for his route and then dispose of it and spend the day at home smoking weed.
When he was found out, he was fired and charged with a felony. It turns out that destroying mail in the amounts he was doing is considered as an act of terrorism (since there’s a lot of official documents that go through the mail system).
He’s still a deadbeat and he’s also not allowed to leave the country because he’s on an international list of known terrorists.”
One Person’s Lie Led To Everyone’s Downfall
Elnur/Shutterstock
“I worked for a short time as an insurance salesman.
When I joined my office, there was this guy who was just killing it in policy sales. My first quarter there he was top salesman in the nation and we had a big office dinner to celebrate.
A few weeks later, he quit showing up at the office. We wondered what was going on. We later found out he was selling policies to people who either didn’t exist or friends and family members then paying for the policies himself. Then after a few months, he would let the policies lapse. Of course, after his big quarter, he couldn’t keep up and company auditors got suspicious.
It became a huge scandal because the president of the company had shouted out congratulations to him in a company presentation. This led to him getting fired, as well as our office and regional managers getting demoted.
Everybody working in the office at the time found different work soon after.”
All He Had To Do Was Ask For Help
Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock
“I worked at a large quick oil change chain for a while after high school. We had just had a meeting about how if the customer was on site, or if the car was a manual transmission and you didn’t know how to drive one, to have the customer move their own car.
This guy finished up on a car. He jumped in to pull it out of the bay. It was a manual transmission. He didn’t know how to work one. The customer had left it in gear instead of neutral with the parking brake on. The guy fired it up, the clutch popped and the car went flying through the garage bay door. The guy just left. He didn’t change his clothes or anything. He just left and we never saw him again.
The customer was in the waiting room. The whole thing was on tape. We watched that tape over and over. The customer’s reaction was priceless. He was obviously upset. The video showed him throwing his hands up like ‘What gives?’
I stayed out of the way while the manager handled the customer. They didn’t pay me enough to deal with that. The store had to pay to fix his car and the bay door to the tune of $30,000.”
That Wasn’t The Best Of Decisions
CREATISTA/Shutterstock
“I used to work for a major chain of coffee shops. One day, one of the young baristas couldn’t open a bag of coffee for a customer who wanted it ground up.
He obviously wasn’t thinking and used his teeth to tear the bag open right in front of the customer.
That would have been bad enough if the idiot wouldn’t have also done this directly in front our of a district manager who was doing a walkthrough of the store along with our store manager.
The district manager immediately took the kid to the back, the store manager started helping the customer throwing free drink coupons at him.
Five minutes later, the kid walked out with all of his personal belongings. The district manager had seen enough and fired him on the spot.”
Guilty By Association
chombosan/Shutterstock
“I worked in a grocery store at the time. Every inch of the place (with the exception of the bathrooms) was covered by the cameras. There was no such thing as the cameras having a blind spot. I had a security guard I liked warn me to be careful of what I did due to the lack of blind spots and many of the cameras being hidden from view.
Despite the fact that there was literally no point during the day when you were off camera there were six people stealing thousands from the cash drawers and stealing credit card information each week. All six were arrested and walked out of the store in cuffs.
Since I liked all six and was considered a friend, I had my cash drawer randomly audited periodically for a few months after that. Every time someone new started to steal, even if I was known to dislike that person, the auditing began again.
I eventually quit before they could fire me.”
This Guy Just Could Not Get It Together
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I worked with a guy at a former job who was always wasted at office parties and would then start reading the managers the Riot Act.
He’d hit on girls and get quite handsy despite their best efforts to dodge him.
Then he’d start fights with people trying to help him.
Anyway, he got fired for being a blundering idiot every time he had a drink with the company and moved to a rival company, who obviously didn’t know what he was like.
I moved to the same company a few months later, and at the first party, I was not shocked to see that he hadn’t changed his ways.
The next day, there was a company-wide e-mail stating, ‘[This employee] has been let go from the company due to his ridiculous behavior at the Christmas party.’
The list of infractions included yelling at managers, groping women, and starting fights.
What an idiot.”
I Don’t Know Which Of These Three Is The Worst
Cineberg/Shutterstock
“There was the guy who let himself back into the office after hours so he could watch adult videos on his computer (this was before people usually had home Internet). He wasn’t expecting our bosses to walk in with a bunch of potential investors, finding him knocking one out with his trousers round his ankles.
Then there was the woman who embezzled $27,000 and spent it on Facebook games. She made little to no attempt to hide what she did, so it was uncovered easily when we were audited.
There was also the manager who threw a stapler at a disabled team member. He screamed at him that he didn’t know the meaning of disabled, that he had a disabled brother, and that the team member was just a lazy prick who was trying to get out of work by making up the pain he was in.
The guy subsequently found out that his pain was due to spinal cancer. The manager was fired on the spot.”
He Needed Help, Not The Can
Kleber Cordeiro/Shutterstock
“I was working for a cable company. One guy had been there for almost 20 years. He was a solid line worker who drove a bucket truck.
He was waiting to turn left on a two-lane road and started his turn when a guy on a motorbike t-boned him in the turn, while he was passing multiple stopped vehicles, at several times the speed limit.
The guy on the bike died.
‘Steve’ couldn’t handle it. Started drinking a lot. Stopped by the store, bought a six-pack on the way home. Cracked one in the parking lot.
Boom. Arrested. Then fired.
He never had a single charge before then. Or any accidents.
‘Steve’ needed help. He was nearly ready to retire, too.”
They Needed Her To Supervise A Transaction, She Was More Interested In Checking Her Phone
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I was a bank teller while I was getting through college. At our bank, we had a ‘limit’ system where in order to cash a check over a certain amount you had to have a manager override the transaction and approve the check themselves.
One day, I was at a new branch (we got shuffled around a lot) and someone came in with a $25,000 check. We had enough to cash it for him, so I asked the manager to come over and take a look and override it. She didn’t. Instead, she was too busy texting/Facebooking at her desk, so she just ‘remote overrode it’ where she didn’t see the check or customer and just typed in her password/okayed the transaction from her own computer.
Because she did this, I figured she must have known the guy with the check and thought that maybe he was a regular. I gave him his money and he was off.
A week later, we found out the check was a counterfeit. She was fired on the spot for negligence because they had her on camera on her cell phone and remote overriding instead of coming over to look.”
“I’m Going To Assume It’s A Recurring Theme For Him”
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“There was a guy at my office who kept urinating in the ficus tree in a conference room.
At first, maintenance thought it was an animal doing something in the walls, and gutted the room.
That didn’t fix it, so they put a camera in. EVERYONE knew the camera was there, what we would catch was the talk of the office. The guy got busted on camera but flat out denied he was peeing in the ficus tree.
Human Resources asked him to stop it (old school company that wouldn’t fire people unless you flat out murdered your boss).
He got busted AGAIN like a week later, but still denied it even though he was there on tape, urinating in the tree. HR relocated him to pretty much the opposite side of the building, right next to a bathroom, and someone finally had the common sense to get rid of the ficus tree.
Instead of using the restroom next to his desk, he continued to just pee in the corner of the conference room. They finally fired him after that one.
We thought maybe that he was trying to get fired, but he fought so hard against it every time it was on the table that it didn’t add up. Occasionally, I’ll look him up on LinkedIn, and based on his work history, I’m going to assume it’s a recurring theme for him.”
It Sounds Like This Scheme Went A Little Too Far
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I worked for the largest telecommunications company in Australia. We had a point system as a staff benefit scheme, so each employee’s performance determined how much points they would receive.
Points could be used to pay your phone/internet bill, but only so many points were allocated per sector. A member of middle management who was in charge of rewarding the points and wasn’t eligible to participate in the scheme, instead over a number of months was adding the points as dollars on her bill, to which she was stocking up with free staff plans iPhones, and then reselling them and waiving the disconnect fees on her account. She got busted after clearing about $10,000 on her account and trying to refund it back to her bank account.
She only got busted because the credit request was so high it had to be approved externally by another department, who thankfully actually did their job for once and checked rather than just stamping approved.
Everyone was glad to see her go after finding out she was scamming the teams out of their rewards points.”
And I Thought The Government Only Hired The Best People
wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
“A guy learned his cube neighbor girl was bi. After befriending her, he started talking about his wife, which quickly spiraled into sending photos of himself and wife in underwear/lingerie, and eventually naked photos.
All this time, the coworker girl advised him she was uncomfortable and advised him to stop. He tried to arrange for the coworker to come hang out with him and wife and was acting like he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Finally, she filed a complaint. After months of investigating, he was transferred to another building a few miles away to a different cubicle job.
This was the United States government.”
This Guy Let This Tantrum Go A Little Too Far
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“There was a guy who was notorious for throwing temper tantrums. He would get red-faced, ruffle his hair up, and get all worked up over stuff that was purely business. He was a pathological liar that constantly painted himself into corners. He was also a small guy, so he obviously had some Napoleon complex.
One day, during a tantrum, he threw down his badge (the one that grants him access into the building) and walked out. He did this in front of his boss and coworkers at a stand up meeting (right next to the front doors).
The next day, he tried to come back but couldn’t get in. When he called, they told him no, he walked off the job. Also, no severance since he technically quit.
The dude threatened to quit publicly almost every day. That particular day, he made a grand gesture off taking of his ID badge, throwing it on the ground, and walking right out the front doors while multiple people watched him.
For about 24 hours, we all assumed he had actually quit until he came crawling back, but it was too late. Human Resources had accepted his ‘resignation.'”
All It Took Was One Mess-Up
fizkes/Shutterstock
“I worked in a pretty cushy job where all staff had flex time. If you did your hours in a week, it didn’t matter when you started or finished. You could also choose to accrue time for an extra holiday or get paid overtime. It was also a job that required a lot of unsupervised time out of office. Oh, and time was tracked through an excel spreadsheet.
With all this in place, one idiot couldn’t keep his hours up. One week, he put in his hours, and the manager printed the timesheet. The next week, he didn’t meet his hours, so he amended the previous week to make it look like he’d accrued time. He got caught and sacked.
The worst part is that everyone knew he’d been doing it for ages, but it was hard to prove. The second to worst part is that to this day some colleagues can acknowledge he was a useless lying moron but in the same breath say it was unfair he was sacked and management had it out for the guy.”
He Can Handle Mistakes, Liars Not So Much
“I once hired a guy who said he knew electrical. We’re a renovation company specializing in flipping dump houses. He seemed like a chump to me, but he started wiring the outlets fast.
I watched him for a bit and told him to watch for the traveler on this one switch, but it seemed like it was all good, so I moved on.
I got back half a day later and he hadn’t moved on from the switch from earlier in the day. He’d wired the traveler wrong, and when he flipped it on (I guess it was live) the breaker blew. I set the breaker and it blew again.
I asked about the traveler. Yeah, he did it right. We pulled the switch apart, nope. Right in the hot.
And you know what? Mistakes happen. I was a little mad because it took six hours and me watching him before he started backtracking his work but I figured everyone gets a first-day pass.
But then he started to blame the other workers. They all tell him to get lost. And then, he started to blame the evicted tenant. He must have snuck back in and switched it around.
I told him to pack his tools and go. I spent the rest of the evening doing it myself.”
Love Stories And Want To Read More Like These?
Image Source
Subscribe to our digest and receive a weekly email of hand-picked stories.